Alabama loss should shut SEC out of BCS title game, open door for Ohio State

Saturday

Nov 30, 2013 at 6:55 PM

SEC football teams have won seven consecutive national titles. Often, it hasn't even been close. Alabama and Florida State clearly looked like the two best teams in college football this year, especially after Oregon grew feet of clay halfway through the season and Baylor suddenly lost its high gear on offense. Ohio State, although undefeated for TWO seasons in a row, has never looked all that good.

Still, after Alabama's shocking loss tonight, no one in the SEC deserves a shot at the national title.

Alabama has a better resume than Ohio State, even with that loss. Alabama beat Virginia Tech and LSU and Texas A&M and Ole Miss. Not exactly the type of gantlet that LSU ran a couple of years ago before losing its rematch to Alabama in the title game, but better than Ohio State's 1-point win over Michigan (7-5) and close wins over Northwestern (5-7) and Wisconsin (9-3). Northwestern and Wisconsin were the only teams ranked when Ohio State played them, and the Wildcats obviously didn't deserve to be.

But here's the thing: Alabama didn't even win its own conference. How can it win the national championship? Even worse, Alabama didn't even reach its conference title game. And the Crimson Tide didn't lose out on a tiebreaker. They were beat fair and square, finishing a game behind Auburn, just as they did two years ago to LSU.

Nor does Auburn deserve to leapfrog Ohio State, which has a healthy BCS lead with .9200 points to Auburn's .8236. The Tigers lost by two touchdowns to LSU, edged Ole Miss by eight points, beat Texas A&M by four and needed a miracle to beat Georgia last week. If it weren't for that Georgia game, I could see Auburn jumping ahead of Ohio State, but this is a team that has lived on smoke and mirrors the same way Notre Dame did last year.

When you lose once by 14 points and need back-to-back miracles not to lose a second and third time, you don't deserve the benefit of the doubt over a team that plays in the Big Ten and has never lost in two years under coach Urban Meyer.

The same goes for a team that didn't even make its own conference championship game. And this is not like the LSU team, which proved itself by dominating Oregon in a nonconference game. Nick Saban's Alabama teams have never tried to play national championship contenders in a nonconference game.

Now, if Ohio State loses to Michigan State in the Big Ten title game, then the door should open again.

If Auburn wins the SEC title game, then the Tigers should replace Ohio State.

If Auburn loses, then Alabama should get an unexpected second chance. But only if Ohio State loses first.

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